Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale

Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale (born Jarnail Singh Brar; 2 June 1947 – 6 June 1984) was a Sikh militant.

He was the leading figure of the Khalistan movement, although he did not personally advocate for a separate Sikh nation.

He was the fourteenth jathedar or leader, of the prominent orthodox Sikh religious institution Damdami Taksal.

Bhindranwale was born on 2 June 1947, as Jarnail Singh Brar to a Jat Sikh family, in the village of Rode, in Moga District (then a part of Faridkot District), located in the region of Malwa.

The grandson of Sardar Harnam Singh Brar, his father, Joginder Singh Brar was a farmer and a local Sikh leader, and his mother was Nihal Kaur.

Jarnail Singh was the seventh of eight siblings of seven brothers and one sister.

He was put into a school in 1953 at the age of 6 but he dropped out of school five years later to work with his father on the farm.

He married Pritam Kaur, the daughter of Sucha Singh of Bilaspur at the age of nineteen.

In 1965, he was enrolled by his father at the Damdami Taksal also known as Bhindran Taksal, a religious school near Moga, Punjab, named after the village of Bhindran Kalan where its leader Gurbachan Singh Bhindranwale lived.

Though based out of Gurdwara Akhand Parkash there, he took his pupils on extended tours of the countryside.

After a one-year course in scriptural, theological and historical studies with Gurbachan Singh Khalsa, partly during a tour but mostly during his stay at Gurdwara Sis Asthan Patshahi IX near Nabha, he rejoined his family and returned to farming, marrying in 1966.

Maintaining ties with the Taksal, he continued studies under Kartar Singh, who became the new head of the Taksal after Gurbachan Singh Khalsa's death in June 1969, and would establish his headquarters at Gurdwara Gurdarshan Prakash at Mehta Chowk, approximately 25 kilometers northeast of Amritsar.

He quickly became the favourite student of Kartar Singh.

Unlike other students he had had familial responsibilities, and he would take time off from the seminary and go back and forth month to month to take care of his wife and two children, balancing his familial and religious responsibilities.

The couple had two sons, Ishar Singh and Inderjit Singh, in 1971 and 1975, respectively.

After the death of Bhindranwale, Pritam Kaur moved along with her sons to Bilaspur village in Moga district and stayed with her brother.

Kartar Singh Khalsa died in a car accident on 16 August 1977.

Before his death, Kartar Singh had appointed the then 31-year-old Bhindranwale as his successor.

His son, Amrik Singh, would become a close companion of Jarnail Singh.

Bhindranwale was formally elected the 14th jathedar of the Damdami Taksal at a bhog ceremony at Mehta Chowk on 25 August 1977.

He adopted the name "Bhindranwale" meaning "from [the village of] Bhindran [Kalan]", the location of the Bhindran Taksal branch of the Damdami Taksal, and attained the religious title of "Sant".

He concluded most of his family responsibilities to dedicate full time to the Taksal, thus following a long tradition of “sants”, an important part of rural Sikh life.

Henceforth his family saw him solely in Sikh religious congregations known as satsangs, though his son Ishar Singh would describe his youth as being "well looked after" and "never in need."

As a missionary Sant of the Taksal, he would tour the villages to give dramatic public sermons and reading of scripture.

He preached the disaffected young Sikhs, encouraging them to return to the path of the Khalsa by giving up consumerism in family life and abstaining from drugs and alcohol, the two main vices afflicting rural society in Punjab, and as a social reformer, denounced practices like the dowry, and encouraged a return to the simple lifestyle prior to the increased wealth of the state and the reversal of the decline in morals following the Green Revolution.

As one observer noted, "The Sant's following grew as he successfully regenerated the good life of purity, dedication and hard work.... These basic values of life...had been the first casualty of commercial capitalism."

An advocate of the Anandpur Sahib Resolution, he gained significant attention after his involvement in the 1978 Sikh-Nirankari clash.

In the summer of 1982, Bhindranwale and the Akali Dal launched the Dharam Yudh Morcha ("righteous campaign"), with its stated aim being the fulfilment of a list of demands based on the Anandpur Sahib Resolution to create a largely autonomous state within India.

Thousands of people joined the movement in the hope of retaining a larger share of irrigation water and the return of Chandigarh to Punjab.

There was dissatisfaction in some sections of the Sikh community with prevailing economic, social, and political conditions.

Over time Bhindranwale grew to be a leader of Sikh militancy.

In 1982, Bhindranwale and his group moved to the Golden Temple complex and made it his headquarters.

Bhindranwale would establish what amounted to a "parallel government" in Punjab, settling cases and resolving disputes, while conducting his campaign.

In 1983, he along with his militant cadre inhabited and fortified the Sikh shrine Akal Takht.

Scholars hold him responsible for launching attacks on Hindus and state institutions from the complex.

In June 1984, Operation Blue Star was carried out by the Indian Army to remove Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale and his armed followers from the buildings of the Harmandir Sahib in the Golden Temple Complex, which resulted in hundreds to thousands of deaths according to various reports, including that of Bhindranwale.

Bhindranwale has remained a controversial figure in Indian history.

While the Sikhs' highest temporal authority Akal Takht describe him a 'Martyr', with immense appeal among rural sections of the Sikh population, who saw him as a powerful leader, who stood up to Indian state dominance and repression, many Indians saw him as spearheading a "revivalist, extremist and terrorist movement".

His stance on the creation of a separate Sikh state remains a point of contention.

She died of heart ailment at age 60, on 15 September 2007 in Jalandhar.